Super Quick Photo Collage

A photo collage is one of the most attractive ways of using a variety of photos in a brochure or promotional piece. Typically, these collages are done by careful planning and then painstakingly resizing, optimizing, assembling and blending a number of images in PhotoShop (or other paint program - we'll refer to PhotoShop here). If you're comfortable breaking ranks with the "right" way of doing a collage, you can create one in a fraction of the time using a combination of PhotoShop and your favourite Layout or Drawing program.

Briefly, here's how:

1. Start with a selection of scans with suitable resolution for the final use (approx. 300 dpi for offset print).
2. Import your selected images into your favourite "Draw" or "Layout" package (i.e. Illustrator, CorelDraw, QuarkXPress, InDesign).
3. Arrange, resize and do rough crops of your photos. You'll have a page that looks something like this:
4. Export or "Print" your image to a TIF or EPS file.
5. Open your exported file in Photoshop. Use the smudge tool to blend the edges between photos. Use the airbrush with a soft edge to feather your outside edges. You'll end up with a final product like this:
6. The above sample, while not exactly beautiful, was produced in under 15 minutes. If you've ever spent the time in PhotoShop resizing images individually, you'll appreciate how much time this would save on complex collage.

When deciding which software package to assemble your images in, there are two main factors to consider:

1. The package's ability to render or export colours accurately. The professional packages mentioned above have little trouble in this area. Some lower end packages may alter the colours in your images dramatically, due to an unsophisticated colour "engine."
2. The ease with which you can export or "print" images. For instance, CorelDraw and Illustrator both have sophisticated "export" features which allow you to export your assembled images to various file formats (i.e. tiff, eps and others) that are compatible with PhotoShop and most other paint packages. QuarkXPress offers a "save page as eps" option, while in InDesign, you can specify in the print options (if you have a PostScript printer driver selected) to "print as eps." In theory, this "print as eps" can be accomplished by "printing to file" and using the eps print option available in most PostScript printer drivers. In practice, however, many lower end software packages do not handle eps images very well and will write a corrupt eps file.

When getting used to the airbrush and smudge tools in PhotoShop, take your time and have some fun. Practice makes perfect and there are many different effects and techniques at your disposal. Desktop Publishers and Designers who can use these tools with confidence to create subtle effects will have a huge advantage over their counterparts.

We strive to be as accurate and current with our information as possible. Due to the infinite number of scenarios that occur in print & desktop publishing, we can not guarantee that the above information will be correct in all situations.